Manatee leaders rushed to fix Piney Point before leak, but time wasn’t on their side
MANATEE
Piney Point has been described as a ticking time bomb for decades, but a recent push from Manatee County leaders to resolve the problem couldn’t beat the clock.
Disaster struck just weeks after officials put together an effort to find the funds necessary to get rid of the contaminated water on the site. Ahead of their promised action, one of the former phosphate plant’s giant ponds sprung a leak, creating the exact environmental crisis that they were trying to get ahead of.
The leak, which ultimately poured contaminated water into Tampa Bay, came the week after a group of commissioners met with state officials in Tallahassee. Those leaders vowed to take Piney Point seriously, but time was not on their side.
“The new board made Piney Point our top priority this calendar year and we were making very good headway with (the Florida Department of Environmental Protection) and the landowner, so it’s very frustrating that we didn’t come on the scene in time to stop everyone’s greatest fear,” said Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge, who joined the Manatee Board of County Commissioners in November.
“If only we had another year or so, we could’ve made such good progress,” added Commissioner Vanessa Baugh.
“We finally started making progress after all these years and instead, the liner rips like it did.”
Since welcoming three new commissioners in November, the board voted to make Piney Point their No. 1 priority with the Florida Legislature. They had also agreed to use the county’s own money to pay for half of a $12 million emergency water treatment program.
Manatee’s sense of urgency came after a warning from HRK Holdings, LLC, the private company that owns and operates Piney Point as an industrial park. Jeff Barath, Piney Point’s site manager, warned commissioners in September that the residual process water ponds on the site were on the verge of reaching capacity thanks to
heavy rainfall.
For years, HRK has used a spray evaporation technique that can treat about 250,000 gallons of water per day, but an increase in rainfall canceled out the progress that had been made to remove the water, according to Barath.
Barath said the site held 750 million gallons of water at that time, leaving just inches of space before they were full. By January, the ponds were holding 800 million gallons of water. In March, the extra pressure from the increased amount of water caused a leak in the largest pond.
“It turns out that all of the warnings were legitimate. They were all true,” Commissioner James Satcher said.
PINEY POINT’S LINER TEAR CAUSED CRISIS
As a former phosphate processing plant, Piney Point still holds large ponds of the process water that was used to help run the machinery before the plant closed. Those ponds sit on top of gypsum, a slightly radioactive byproduct of phosphate processing. Because the gypsum is radioactive, it must be lined and covered to prevent hazardous contamination.
A tear in the pond liner covering the gypsum is what caused the Piney
Point leak, engineers say. The location of the tear near the bottom of the site’s largest pond — holding 480 million gallons of water — threatened to destabilize the system and release a 20-foot wall of water.
More than 300 homes and nearby businesses were forced to evacuate at the height of the crisis.
“Those liners were only going to last so long. It was inevitable that we were going to have a major leak.
My thought was that we need to take the bull by the horns and get this thing done,” said Baugh, who has pushed the county to find a solution for years. “When we had to evacuate all these businesses and all these homes, that makes it Manatee County’s problem — that’s our responsibility to look out for our residents and businesses.”
The Florida DEP estimates that the leak led site operators to dump about 215 million gallons of process water from Piney
Point into Tampa Bay. That water is rich in nutrients that are supposed to be removed before it is released into local waterways.
In the coming weeks, environmentalists are bracing for the possibility of a harmful algae bloom, including red tide, that could use those nutrients as a spark. Researchers have proven that algae organisms thrive when nitrogen and phosphorous enter the water.
WHO SHOULD HAVE RESOLVED PINEY POINT’S DANGER?
Ever since Mulberry Corp., the former owners, abandoned Piney Point after going bankrupt in 2001, the site has been a thorn in the side of state and county officials, who have struggled to come up with a plan that would put the hazardous site to rest.
For years, the debate centered around a philosophical argument: Should taxpayer dollars be used to solve issues on a privatelyowned property? In a recent news briefing about Piney Point, FDEP Secretary Noah Valenstein said he didn’t understand why his predecessors didn’t resolve the issue sooner.
“I just think it was like Secretary Valenstein said – one thing they’ve learned is they will never allow a property to be sold to the private entity unless a gypsum stack is completely closed,” said Commissioner Carol Whitmore, who has served on the board for 15 years. “I think they realize they should’ve looked at it.”
HRK entered the scene in 2006 when they agreed to purchase the troubled property from FDEP for $4.3 million. As part of the agreement, HRK became responsible for the longterm care of the site.
In a recent statement after the leak, HRK denied any culpability. The company instead blamed FDEP for not following through with a plan to close the gypsum stacks.
“To insinuate that HRK has done anything other than what was required of and allowed by the State of Florida under authority of the numerous agreements and projects undertaken by the company is preposterous,” an HRK spokesman said in a statement released last week.
“Rather, since the 2011 liner system breach and the costly repairs and site remediation caused by that event, HRK has proposed numerous solutions to dispose of historically retained process water at the site, properly repair the faulty synthetic liner system, and adequately complete the site closure being conducted by FDEP at the time HRK purchased the site,” the statement continued.
But state lawmakers aren’t buying HRK’s excuse. In an interview with the Bradenton Herald, state Sen. Jim Boyd, RBradenton, pointed out that HRK had been fully informed about Piney Point’s issues before they bought the land.
“They were the property owners and they bought it knowing it had a problem. They’ve been rolling the dice and hoping it was going to work out,” said Boyd. “It frustrated me for them to point the finger at DEP because the state had solutions in 2014 and it didn’t get done.”
State Rep. Will Robinson, R-Bradenton, echoed Boyd’s concerns. He said HRK hasn’t been a good steward of the Piney Point property, and in the end, their negligence comes at a cost to local residents.
“It’s difficult to explain to people why the government is spending money to fix a problem on private land, but you have to show leadership. The magnitude of an environmental calamity would be much more costly than a cleanup,” said Robinson.
PINEY POINT RESOLUTION CAME CLOSE IN 2014
Toward the end of 2013, county staff applied for a permit to install an underground injection well near Piney Point. State officials at the time said that was the best and safest option to get rid of the wastewater on the site.
Also known as a deep well, an underground injection well would send treated water about 2,000 feet below the surface. Similar wells already exist in Manatee County for disposal of other wastewater.
But the board backed away from that option several months later. Residents were concerned about the potential for the well to affect Florida’s aquifer and commissioners never took a vote to move forward with the option.
Some previous commissioners were also wary of becoming the leading voice in resolving the Piney Point problem, hinting that taking charge of the issue could leave them footing the whole bill.
“If it’s a $200 million problem, why should the county bear that cost? That’s ridiculous to even think,” said former commissioner Betsy Benac, who warned the county not to “own the responsibility” during her time on the board.
But Piney Point’s eventual disaster happened despite everyone’s best efforts, according to elected officials who spoke with the Bradenton Herald.
“I think that everyone had their reasons for whatever their thoughts were,” Baugh said. “I wish our board could have jumped on board sooner, but it didn’t happen. I hate seeing any of the water in our bay get contaminated from the leak, but that has been stopped now. We can’t go back and change anything in the past, we just deal with today.”
“I’m not criticizing the board by any stretch. I wish we would’ve dealt with this in 2014 and we wouldn’t have this problem, but we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube,” said Boyd. “I’m grateful that the current board is willing to make the commitment to fix this.”
Van Ostenbridge said he felt there was plenty of blame to go around, including some of his own predecessors who failed to come up with a solution.
“I think it’s all three. The landowner was negligent. I feel that DEP was complacent and previous boards failed to make enough noise to prevent this from happening,” he said. “They had a responsibility to our community to sound the alarm and they did not.”
“I think they were penny smart and pound foolish,” Van Ostenbridge continued, referring to previous commissioners. “They failed to see the bigger picture. Multiple members claimed this was not our problem, but it certainly feels like our problem now.”
CLOSING PINEY POINT HAS STATE SUPPORT
With the help of state and federal agencies, commissioners said they were lucky to avoid an immediate threat to human lives.
“The bottom line is I am so thankful for the state for taking charge of this problem once and for all. I wish it hadn’t happened, but I am thrilled it’s being taken care of,” said
Baugh. “If you look at where we were with the catastrophe we had two weeks ago, thank God that didn’t happen.”
State and federal engineers remain on the site, working around the clock to begin treating the process water in the ponds. Gov. Ron DeSantis recently ordered FDEP to put together a plan for the full closure of the site, which is expected to cost around $200 million.
“The silver lining is now we have the governor’s help and he has proven to be a friend of the environment and the people, so I believe he’s well able to make sure this is taken care of safely and effectively from this point forward,” Satcher said.
The county has also moved forward with its own plans to aid in the closure of the site. Commissioners voted on Tuesday to approve a $10 million construction agreement to build a deep well just south of the
Piney Point site.
The county will own and operate the well, allowing Manatee’s local leaders to determine how clean the treated water is before it is pumped below ground. Commissioners have said they would prefer to see this well used exclusively for Piney Point waste and no other purpose in the future.
FDEP is expected to expedite the permitting process on the well, which will be built on a 42-acre parcel of county-owned land across the road from Piney Point. Once permits are received, construction crews hope to have the well built within a year.
Ryan Callihan: 941-745-7095, @RCCallihan